Slashdot | Meetings Make You Dumber

Slashdot: Meetings Make You Dumber

Check out this link on Slashdot to a study reported on MSNBC where researchers have confirmed what many have long thought-- large group meetings are a waste of time and instead of great new ideas, you get "group think".

Well, now this makes my past life make a bit more sense. And explains why so much of the advertising on U.S. TV is crap-- it's dreamt up first be ad types stuck in a room together, then by focus groups of consumers stuck in a room together, and then vetted by more people stuck in a room together.

On a slightly more serious note, for all of us doing qualitative research out there in academe, this is indeed one of the downsides of focus group based research and something to be aware of. Not a reason not to talk with subjects in groups, just need to be aware of all potential pitfalls and know your way around them.

Ohhhh, you know you want it!!

This is a link to one of the most brilliant, dead-on, scathing, and hilarious pieces I've seen written about anything lately. That it's about how we need to stop being tech-whores basically, and stop buying all the latest whizbang gadgets that ultimately suck.

Here, see for your self with this dagger-esque excerpt--

"And you guys just ate it up. Kept buying shitty phones and broken media devices green and dripping with DRM. You broke the site, clogging up the pipe like retarded salmon, to read the latest announcements of the most trivial jerk-off products, completely ignoring the stories about technology actually making a difference to real human beings, because you wanted a new chromed robot turd to put in your pocket to impress your friends and make you forget for just a few minutes, blood coursing as you tremblingly cut through the blister pack, that your life is utterly void of any lasting purpose."

I can feel a bit righteous in posting this since I'm not part of the uber-geekdom he's skwering so badly. Oh my research may be in digital media, and I may be studying with some of those supposed high priests of nerdom, but believe me I'm not drinking the Kool-aid. Never have. Hell, I've usually been among the most cautious adopters of new anything. I always seem to catch on to a trend when it's already gone way mainstream.... or past that. People, my own damn family included, used to joke that if I caught on a trend, or picked up on something, it was because it was already "out". I'd show some interest in the latest fad or clothing trend and my own mother would say something along the lines of, "oh, that's been popular for some time now. I wondered if you'd ever pick up on that....or finally want that". Gee, thanks everyone!

So go ahead, read, laugh, find your self or your friends in this post and the linked article.

And then perhaps do what he says so that we can get some truly good, really user-oriented design out there. Money talks.